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Wal-Mart to Launch Online Music Store
Dteyn writes "I heard on the radio today that Wal-Mart will soon be opening up an online music store to compete with the likes of Apple's iTunes and Napster. According to the radio newsguy, it's expected to be officially announced as early as next week. Looks like this 'digital music' thing is starting to catch on with the bigwigs. Finally."
I wonder if all the songs will be censored like the CDs in the stores?
~.Evanrude
The first company to sell decent music using a lossless codec will get my money. Until then, I can't justify spending $10+ for an album of crappy MP3s when I can buy the CD used for less (or even sometimes new for a dollar or two more).
Online music for Linux, maybe?
My Ass hurts.
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Why add another store which will have the same set of songs?
Worse, why add another store which will have a subset of the songs? The article states that Walmart is discussion with the 5 major record labels... Apple has contracted with many independent labels, and I don't really see these indies striking up a deal with Walmart.
Also, Apple has admitted they don't make much off the store and really use it to sell iPods - what exactly is Walmart's plan here?
Wal-Mart has a corporate policy of beating suppliers until they relent on pricing.
Since digital music costs fractions of a penny to duplicate, the marginal cost is less than one cent, which is where the RIAA's revenue will go once they've been strong-armed by the Wal-Mart business process.
The only way Wal-Mart will not do this is if they buy the RIAA outright and use their ownership to make up "cost" numbers.
Note that this will be "passed on to the consumer" in the form of a 1% reduction in retail prices.
I am surprised that MS hasn't jumped on the bandwagon yet... but I know their strategy will be to buy out whoever wins the on-line music war... cause we all know MS can't innovate for poo-poo. (despite how much their marketing division deliberately overuse the word)
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
IMHO we're in a transition period, where the market is flooded with more services than you can count, and more services than can possibly survive. This is something I see as only an incredibly good thing. The competition between them all will weed out the utter trash, the competition between the better services will improve those, and in time we'll have music download services that are actually useful
I don't consider any of the current pay-for-download services anywhere near useful yet, they all suffer from a variety of DRM, lock-in and cost problems, but more will come into the market to compete with those, on a platform that PEOPLE want, not manufacturers
Yet another music service in the works?...
Just in my inbox:
--------------------
Subject: Important MP3.com Announcement
CNET Networks, Inc announced today that it has acquired certain assets of MP3.com, Inc.
Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 12:00 PM PST the MP3.com website will no longer be accessible in its current form.
CNET Networks, Inc. plans to introduce a new MP3 music service in the near future. If you would like to receive email updates on this service, including an invitation to a special members-only preview, please sign up here.
MP3.com is not transferring your personal information to CNET Networks, Inc. or any other third party.
On behalf of all of us at MP3.com we thank you for your patronage and continued support. It has been a privilege to host one of the largest and most diverse collections of music in the world. MP3.com wishes to express its sincere thanks to each of you for making us your premier destination for music online.
Sincerely,
MP3.com
--------------------
Looks like this 'digital music' thing is starting to catch on with the bigwigs. Finally.
One problem: 'digital music' doesn't need bigwigs.
Nor do we want them. For they bring us DRM, low quality audio, inflated prices, and they still screw our favorite artists.
At least the next logical step is in place, however: Artists ditch their labels and sell directly online. Followed by: Artists forget about selling music itself because it's such cheap advertisement thanks to rapid online distribution that *everyone* now uses.
they are very very good at putting pressure on suppliers to cut prices, because they are such a big volume seller.
They know now, that without all the distribution costs of physical media, that the 90cents / track that Apple currently pays to the RIAA, can be cut down to 50 cents or less because they know this is all just pure profit for the RIAA right now. This is all fat, Walmart knows it and they have the buyer market power to make this price cut happen.
Then they will sell those tracks to us for 60 cents, undercutting Apple, and Walmart still will make money.
This is how Walmart always does it with whatever they sell. No reason it will be any different this time.
Wal-Mart has several advantages. First it can blast out info about this service though it's retail stores. Second they will be cheaper than Apple (or else they wouldn't be entering the market), Wal-Mart has a ton of power over suppliers and can get their prices very low. Apple or any of the other services don't have the brick and motor sales has leverage.
Wal-Mart undercut Netflix's prices and they will do it to Apple.
With all the talk of censored music at Walmart, it might help to understand a bit about the company. They are based in Bentonville, GA. A hellhole of a place, quite a ways from a major city. Everyone in the town works for Walmart. As far as I know, everything there is owned by walmart. Gas stations, food, and even (surpise) walmart itself. Bentonville is in a dry county. That means that it's illegal to serve, sell, or buy booze in the county. People there apparently have a real problem with alcohol, think it's the devil. A friend of a friend took a consulting job there about a year ago. She was in another county at a bar and someone that worked with her saw her drinking a beer. She was fired the following monday.
At my previous job, I had to deal with walmart as a client. They are a bunch of Nazis. They are huge, and many companies depend on them to survive, and walmart knows it. That's why they can get away with doing almost anything they want. 70% of all companies that do business with walmart either go bankrupt or get purchased by walmart.
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As I have a walmart less than 3 blocks from my house, I pick them up there.
When this system works, it kicks ass. It's cheap (26 cents), they can handle ass-loads of volume (I've ordered 300+ prints), consistent (color is usually pretty damn close to what I send them), fast (store the pictures on their servers for repeat prints), and free shipping.
When this system doesn't work, I think about killing every walmart employee I see. In a small town, that's everybody. :(
They used to only support IE, and some ass-tacular version of netscape. That hasn't gotten much better. (I use a mac for this). Their javascript is buggy. They make me go through 20 screens even though I do the same thing *every time*. Their servers are slow during the day, sometimes to the point of unusable. I get a million timeouts on the secure side, because they can't handle the load.
Best of all, they had an issue where they 'lost' my pictures, and replaced them with some booger-eatin', twelve-sandwich makin', camero-rustin', trailer-house dentist's nightmare's people's photos.
I took screen caps of all the good ones. I was surprised they could afford a camera. I really will have to post a link to them.
Walmart did fix this, but only after I went through email hell (happy obvious taglines on every email = CSR death!).
The photo center has improved, but having used it for more than a year, any music service is going to suck the big musical nuts in the sky for awhile.
They'll compete on price like they always do, work out the kinks, and have a pretty bland selection.
w00t - more volume, less choice.
Hey,
The website http://www.hearsaymusic.ca is currently recruiting Indepedent Canadian Artists wanting to sell their music online in mp3 format (as well as CDs, etc.). Artists interested should e-mail contact@hearsaymusic.ca for more info.
Cheers,
Warren
ps. ogg to come later
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Daniel
http://people.cinn.ca/daniel/
However, this is not always the case, otherwise people would see that Walmart only expands into markets to control and dominate them.
I used to believe if i told people about this, they would choose against Walmart.
I was mistaken.
Its sad when you're right and no one will listen to you.
Eat a Chicken, You know you want to.